APORS 97

The Fourth Conference of the Association of Asian-Pacific Operational Research Societies within IFORS

November 30 - December 4
1997

Melbourne Convention Centre
Melbourne, Australia

supported by

The Australian Society for Operations Research Inc

Operational Research Society of New Zealand

Welcome to the APORS'97 Conference Web Site!

The conference was organised by the Melbourne Chapter of the Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR) with the support of ASOR's other chapters, and the Operational Research Society of New Zealand (ORSNZ).

We hope that the information provided on this site was useful to you in planning your trip to Melbourne. We shall keep this site open at least until December 31st 1998 so that you can have a look at the program, abstacts, and full papers.

We would like to thanks all the delegates for their contribution to the success of the conference.

If you attended the conference and interested in linking your full papers to this site send us the address of your paper and we shall link it to the list of full papers.

Except for this short post-conference note, the site has not changed since the conference. Thus, you'll find reference to the conference in future tense. .... eg.

The Organising Committee invites you to attend this exciting conference whose theme is

Coexistence between Human, Natural and Technological Resources

If you plan to attend the Conference you are encouraged to visit this site and make use of the facilities it provides. In particular, you might be interested in making full papers of your presentation(s) available on your web site and linked to this site so that it would be accessible prior to the Conference.

We would like to encourage OR students to attend and participate in the Conference. A prize of AUD 500 will be awarded to the best student presentation.

ABSTRACT DATABASE

Most of the abstracts we have received are already listed in the Abstract DataBase of the conference.

If you submitted an abstract (via fax, e-mail, etc) and it is not listed there, then in all likelihood it is on our list of abstracts to be processed.

AUDIO VISUAL EQUIPMENT

The standard audio visual equipment will be the conventional over head projector. If you need any other audio visual equipment for your presentation contact the organiser of your session (if you present an invited paper) or the Organising Committee.

IMPORTANT DATES

Monday, April 14, 1997	Deadline for submission of abstracts
Friday, 30 May, 1997	Notification of acceptance of abstracts
June, 1997	Distribution of Registation/Accommodation Forms
Tuesday, 30 September, 1997	Expiration date of Early Bird Registration
Sunday, 30 November, 1997	Welcome cocktails in Melbourne!

PROGRAM

The technical program of the Conference will consist of:

Two Keynote Address:
- Relevance of OR/MS to an Organisation in the 21st Century
  Dr John Adams, General Manager, Ferntree Computer Corporation Ltd, Australia
- The Role of OR in the Deregulated Electricity Markets
  Dr Grant Read, University of Cantebury, New Zealand
Semi Plenary Sessions (lectures and tutorials)
60 minutes each
Parallel Sessions of invited and contributed papers
30 minutes each
A post conference workshop on
Developing Interactive OR User Interfaces for the WWW

There will also be an exciting social program.

Some information on the technical program is now available, including a tentative schedule for the presentations:

POST CONFERENCE WORKSHOP

The basic preliminary details on this workshop are as follows:

Title	Developing Interactive OR User Interfaces for the WWW
Time and Date	9:00AM-1:00PM, Friday December 5, 1997
Venue	Science Multimedia Lab, The University of Melbourne
Organiser	Moshe Sniedovich, The University of Melbourne
Outline	This four hours hands-on workshop will equip you with basic skills needed for the development of OR/MS oriented interactive user interfaces for the Internet. These can be used both for the development of teaching tools and for user interfaces for commercial systems such as banks, customer services units, etc.

More details on the workshop will be included in the material to be distributed in June. Until then you may wish to visit the web site of the workshop for further information.

EXHIBITORS

Organisations are invited to participate in an exhibition being held in conjunction with the Conference.

The Organising Committee has contracted Expo Hire Pty Ltd to erect 10 stands in the Atrium of the Melbourne Convention Centre from Sunday 30 November, 1997 to Thursday 4 December 1997.

Please contact the Organising Committee for more details.

SPONSORSHIP

This international conference, to be held at the Melbourne Convention Centre, is expected to attract 350 delegates from members countries of APORS which include Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, New Zealand and Singapore. Delegates are also expected from Europe, USA, and South America.

Your company is invited to participate in the sponsorship program by taking up one or more of the following three sponsorship opportunities:

Major Sponsor
Conference Sponsor
Event Sponsorships

Please contact the Organising Committee for more details.

ORGANISATIONAL MATTERS

As was indicated above, the Conference is organised by the Melbourne Chapter of the Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR) with the support of ASOR's other chapters, and the Operational Research Society of New Zealand (ORSNZ).

Two committees are doing the work behind the scene:

General organisational matters are handled by the Organising Committee and matters related to the technical program are handled by the Technical Program Committee. The persons behind the scene are:

The Organising Committee
- Bob Johnston
- Paul Lochert, Chair
- Kaye Marion
- Guan Meigu
- Baikunth Nath
- Patrick Tobin, Treasurer
- Steve Weal
The Technical Program Committee
- Local Representatives:
  - Lou Caccetta
  - Peter Cerone
  - Andrew Eberhard
  - Jay Horton
  - Philip Kirby
  - Santosh Kumar, Co-Chair
  - Pra Murthy
  - Miles Nicholls
  - Charles Pearce
  - Moshe Sniedovich, Co-Chair
- Country Representatives:
  - China: Xiang-Sun Zhang
  - Hong Kong: K.K. Lai
  - India: M.N. Poddar
  - Japan: Tatsuo Oyama
  - Malaysia: Mohamad Noh Samik
  - Korea: S.J. Park
  - New Zealand: V. Mabin
  - Singapore: L.K. Wah
  - Philippines: M.M. Augustin

The two committees are assisted by the Conference Orgainser:

PR Conference Consultants Pty Ltd
P.O.Box 326
Deepdence Delivery Centre, 3103
Australia
Tel: + 61 3 9816 9111
Fax: +61 3 9816 9287
E-mail: prcc@mail.austasia.net

WEB SITE MATTERS

Matters concerning this web site should be communicated to:

Moshe Sniedovich
Department of Mathematics
The University of Melbourne
Parkville, VIC 3052
Australia
Tel: +61 3 9344 5559
Fax: + 61 3 9344 4599
E-mail: moshe@maths.mu.oz.au

SUGGESTION BOX

Please e-mail your comments and/or suggestions to:

Organisational matters: prcc@mail.austasia.net
Technical Program: moshe@maths.mu.oz.au
Web Site:moshe@maths.mu.oz.au

HOT LINE

General organisational matters:
PR Conference Consultants Pty Ltd
P.O.Box 326
Deepdence Delivery Centre, 3103
Australia
Tel: + 61 3 9816 9111
Fax: +61 3 9816 9287
E-mail: prcc@mail.austasia.net
Technical Program:
APORS 97 Technical Program Committee
PR Conference Consultants Pty Ltd
P.O.Box 326
Deepdence Delivery Centre, 3103
Australia
Tel: +61 3 9344 5559
Fax: 613 3 9344 4599 (Att: Moshe Sniedovich)
E-mail: m.sniedovich@ms.unimelb.edu.au

STOP PRESS

The conference attracted about 400 delegates from over 34 countries.

The web site will be kept alive at least till the end of the year and you are welcome to link your full paper to the site. All you have to do is send us the address of the paper.